by Tom Clancy
“We are traveling out of the country soon—the day after tomorrow. It’s a state visit to New Zealand and the Solomon Islands. You may be gone before we get back.”
“Is your wife up to it, Your Highness?”
“I think so. A change of scenery, the doctor said, is just the ticket. She had a very bad experience yesterday, but”—he smiled—“I think it was harder on me than on her.”
I’ll buy that, Ryan thought. She’s young, she’ll bounce back, and at least she has something good to remember. Putting your body between your family and the bullets ought to firm up any relationship. “Hey, she sure as hell knows you love her, sir.”
“I do, you know,” the Prince said seriously.
“It’s the customary reason to get married, sir,” Jack replied, “even for us common folk.”
“You’re a most irreverent chap, Jack.”
“Sorry about that.” Ryan grinned. So did the Prince.
“No, you’re not.” His Highness extended his hand. “Thank you, Sir John, for many things.”
Ryan watched him leave with a brisk step and a straight back.
“Tony, you know the difference between him and me? I can say that I used to be a Marine, and that’s enough. But that poor guy’s got to prove it every damned day, to everybody he meets. I guess that’s what you have to do when you’re in the public eye all the time.” Jack shook his head. “There’s no way in hell they could pay me enough to take his job.”
“He’s born to it,” Wilson said.
Ryan thought about that. “That’s one difference between your country and mine. You think people are born to something. We know that they have to grow into it. It’s not the same thing, Tony.”
“Well, you’re part of it now, Jack.”
“I think I should go.” David Ashley looked at the telex in his hand. The disturbing thing was that he’d been requested by name. The PIRA knew who he was, and they knew that he was the Security Service executive on the case. How the hell did they know that!
“I agree,” James Owens said. “If they’re this anxious to talk with us, they might be anxious enough to tell us something useful. Of course, there is an element of risk. You could take someone with you.”
Ashley thought about that one. There was always the chance that he’d be kidnapped, but ... The strange thing about the PIRA was that they did have a code of conduct. Within their own definitions, they were honorable. They assassinated their targets without remorse, but they wouldn’t deal in drugs. Their bombs would kill children, but they’d never kidnapped one. Ashley shook his head.
“No, people from the Service have met with them before and there’s never been a problem. I’ll go alone.” He turned for the door.
“Daddy!” Sally ran into the room and stopped cold at the side of the bed as she tried to figure a way to climb high enough to kiss her father. She grabbed the side rails and set one foot on the bedframe as if it were the monkey bars at her nursery school and sprang upward. Her diminutive frame bent over the edge of the mattress as she scrambled for a new foothold, and Ryan pulled her up.
“Hi, Daddy.” Sally kissed him on the cheek.
“And how are you today?”
“Fine. What’s that, Daddy?” She pointed.
“It’s called a cast,” Cathy Ryan answered. “I thought you had to go to the bathroom.”
“Okay.” Sally jumped back off the bed.
“I think it’s in there,” Jack said. “But I’m not sure.”
“I thought so,” Cathy said after surveying Jack’s attachment to the bed. “Okay, come on, Sally.”
A man had entered behind his family, Ryan saw. Late twenties, very athletic, and nicely dressed, of course. He was also rather good-looking, Jack reflected.
“Good afternoon, Doctor Ryan,” he said. “I’m William Greville.”
Jack made a guess. “What regiment?”
“Twenty-second, sir.”
“Special Air Service?” Greville nodded, a proud but restrained smile on his lips.
“When you care enough to send the very best,” Jack muttered. “Just you?”
“And a driver, Sergeant Michaelson, a policeman from the Diplomatic Protection Group.”
“Why you and not another cop?”
“I understand your wife wishes to see a bit of the countryside. My father is something of an authority on various castles, and Her Majesty thought that your wife might wish to have an, ah, escort familiar with the sights. Father has dragged me through nearly every old house in England, you see.”
“Escort” is the right word, Ryan thought, remembering what the “Special Air Service” really was. The only association they had with airplanes was jumping out of them—or blowing them up.
Greville went on. “I am also directed by my colonel to extend an invitation to our regimental mess.”
Ryan gestured at his suspended arm. “Thanks, but that might have to wait a while.”
“We understand. No matter, sir. Whenever you have the chance, we’ll be delighted to have you in for dinner. We wanted to extend the invitation before the bootnecks, you see.” Greville grinned. “What you did was more our sort of op, after all. Well, I had to extend the invitation. You want to see your family, not me.”
“Take good care of them ... Lieutenant?”
“Captain,” Greville corrected. “We will do that, sir.” Ryan watched the young officer leave as Cathy and Sally emerged from the bathroom.
“What do you think of him?” Cathy asked.
“His daddy’s a count, Daddy!” Sally announced. “He’s nice. ”
“What?”
“His father’s Viscount-something-or-other,” his wife explained as she walked over. “You look a lot better.”
“So do you, babe.” Jack craned his neck up to meet his wife’s kiss.
“Jack, you’ve been smoking.” Even before they’d gotten married, Cathy had bullied him into stopping.
Her damned sense of smell, Jack thought. “Be nice, I’ve had a hard day.”
“Wimp!” she observed disgustedly.
Ryan looked up at the ceiling. To the whole world I’m a hero, but I smoke a couple of cigarettes and to Cathy that makes me a
wimp. He concluded that the world was not exactly overrun with justice.
“Gimme a break, babe.”
“Where’d you get them?”
“I have a cop baby-sitting me in here—he had to go someplace a few minutes ago.”
Cathy looked around for the offending cigarette pack so that she could squash it. Jack had it stashed under his pillow. Cathy Ryan sat down. Sally climbed into her lap.
“How do you feel?”
“I know it’s there, but I can live with it. How’d you make out last night?”
“You know where we are now, right?”
“I heard.”
“It’s like being Cinderella.” Caroline Muller Ryan, MD, grinned.
John Patrick Ryan, PhD, wiggled the fingers of his left hand. “I guess I’m the one who turned into the pumpkin. I guess you’re going to make the trips we planned. Good.”
“Sure you don’t mind?”
“Half the reason for the vacation was to get you away from hospitals, Cathy, remember? No sense taking all the film home unused, is it?”
“It’d be a lot more fun with you.”
Jack nodded. He’d looked forward to seeing the castles on the list, too. Like many Americans, Ryan could not have abided the English class system, but that didn’t stop him from being fascinated with its trappings. Or something like that, he thought. His knighthood, he knew, might change that perspective if he allowed himself to dwell on it.
“Look on the bright side, babe. You’ve got a guide who can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Lord Jones’s castle on the coast of whatever. You’ll have plenty of time for it, too.”
“Yeah,” she said, “the police said we’d be staying over a while longer than we planned. I’ll have to talk to Professor Lewi
ndowski about that.” She shrugged. “They’ll understand.”
“How do you like the new place? Better than the hotel?”
“You’re going to have to see—no, you’ll have to experience it.” She laughed. “I think hospitality is the national sport over here. They must teach it in the schools, and have quarterly exams. And guess who we’re having dinner with tonight?”
“I don’t have to guess.”
“Jack, they’re so nice.”
“I noticed. Looks like you’re really getting the VIP treatment.”
“What’s the Special Air Service—he’s some kind of pilot?”
“Something like that,” Jack said diffidently. Cathy might feel uncomfortable sitting next to a man who had to be carrying a gun. And was trained to use it with as little compunction as a wolf might use his teeth. “You’re not asking how I feel.”
“I got hold of your chart on the way in,” Cathy explained.
“And?”
“You’re doing okay, Jack. I see you can move your fingers. I was worried about that.”
“How come?”
“The brachial plexus—it’s a nerve junction inside your shoulder. The bullet missed it by about an inch and a half. That’s why you can move your fingers. The way you were bleeding, I thought the brachial artery was cut, and that runs right next to the nerves. It would have put your arm out of business for good. But”—she smiled—“you lucked out. Just broken bones. They hurt but they heal.”
Doctors are so wonderfully objective, Ryan told himself, even the ones you marry. Next thing, she’ll say the pain is good for me.
“Nice thing about pain,” Cathy went on. “It tells you the nerves are working.”
Jack closed his eyes and shook his head. He opened them when he felt Cathy take his hand.
“Jack, I’m so proud of you.”
“Nice to be married to a hero?”
“You’ve always been a hero to me.”
“Really?” She’d never said that before. What was heroic about being an historian? Cathy didn’t know the other stuff he did, but that wasn’t especially heroic either.
“Ever since you told Daddy to—well, you know. Besides, I love you, remember?”
“I seem to recall a reminder of that the other day.”
Cathy made a face. “Better get your mind off that for a while. ”
“I know.” Ryan made a face of his own. “The patient must conserve his energy—or something. What ever happened to that theory about how a happy attitude speeds recovery?”
“That’s what I get for letting you read my journals. Patience, Jack.”
Nurse Kittiwake came in, saw the family, and made a quick exit.
“I’ll try to be patient,” Jack said, and looked longingly at the closing door.
“You turkey,” Cathy observed. “I know you better than that.”
She did, Jack knew. He couldn’t even make that threat work. Oh, well—that’s what you get for loving your wife.
Cathy stroked his face. “What did you shave with this morning, a rusty nail?”
“Yeah—I need my razor. Maybe my notes, too?”
“I’ll bring them over or have somebody do it.” She looked up when Wilson came back in.
“Tony, this is Cathy, my wife, and Sally, my daughter. Cathy, this is Tony Wilson. He’s the cop who’s baby-sitting me.”
“Didn’t I see you last night?” Cathy never forgot a face—so far as Jack could tell, she never forgot much of anything.
“Possibly, but we didn’t speak—rather a busy time for all of us. You are well, Lady Ryan?”
“Excuse me?” Cathy asked. “Lady Ryan?”
“They didn’t tell you?” Jack chuckled.
“Tell me what?”
Jack explained. “How do you like being married to a knight?”
“Does that mean you have to have a horse, Daddy?” Sally asked hopefully. “Can I ride it?”
“Is it legal, Jack?”
“They told me that the Prime Minister and the President would discuss it today.”
“My God,” Lady Ryan said quietly. After a moment, she started smiling.
“Stick with me, kid.” Jack laughed.
“What about the horse, Daddy!” Sally insisted.
“I don’t know yet. We’ll see.” He yawned. The only practical use Ryan acknowledged for horses was running at tracks—or maybe tax shelters. Well, I already have a sword, he told himself.
“I think Daddy needs a nap,” Cathy observed. “And I have to buy something for dinner tonight.”
“Oh, God!” Ryan groaned. “A whole new wardrobe.”
Cathy grinned. “Whose fault is that, Sir John?”
They met at Flanagan’s Steakhouse on O’Connell Street in Dublin. It was a well-regarded establishment whose tourist trade occasionally suffered from being too close to a McDonald’s. Ashley was nursing a whiskey when the second man joined him. A third and fourth took a booth across the room and watched. Ashley had come alone. This wasn’t the first such meeting, and Dublin was recognized—most of the time—as neutral ground. The two men on the other side of the room were to keep a watch for members of the Garda, the Republic’s police force.
“Welcome to Dublin, Mr. Ashley,” said the representative of the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army.
“Thank you, Mr. Murphy,” the counterintelligence officer answered. “The photograph we have in the file doesn’t do you justice.”
“Young and foolish, I was. And very vain. I didn’t shave very much then,” Murphy explained. He picked up the menu that had been waiting for him. “The beef here is excellent, and the vegetables are always fresh. This place is full of bloody tourists in the summer—those who don’t want French fries—driving prices up as they always do. Thank God they’re all back home in America now, leaving so much money behind in this poor country.”
“What information do you have for us?”
“Information?”
“You asked for the meeting, Mr. Murphy,” Ashley pointed out.
“The purpose of the meeting is to assure you that we had no part in that bloody fiasco yesterday.”
“I could have read that in the papers—I did, in fact.”
“It was felt that a more personal communique was in order, Mr. Ashley.”
“Why should we believe you?” Ashley asked, sipping at his whiskey. Both men kept their voices low and level, though neither man had the slightest doubt as to what they thought of each other.
“Because we are not as crazy as that,” Murphy replied. The waiter came, and both men ordered. Ashley chose the wine, a promising Bordeaux. The meal was on his expense account. He was only forty minutes off the flight from London’s Gatwick airport. The request for a meeting had been made before dawn in a telephone call to the British Ambassador in Dublin.
“Is that a fact?” Ashley said after the waiter left, staring into the cold blue eyes across the table.
“The Royal Family are strictly off limits. As marvelous a political target as they all are”—Murphy smiled—“we’ve known for some time that an attack on them would be counterproductive.”
“Really?” Ashley pronounced the word as only an Englishman can do it. Murphy flushed angrily at this most elegant of insults.
“Mr. Ashley, we are enemies. I would as soon kill you as have dinner with you. But even enemies can negotiate, can’t they, now?”
“Go on.”
“We had no part of it. You have my word.”
“Your word as a Marxist-Leninist?” Ashley inquired with a smile.
“You are very good at provoking people, Mr. Ashley.” Murphy ventured his own smile. “But not today. I am here on a mission of peace and understanding.”
Ashley nearly laughed out loud, but caught himself and grinned into his drink.
“Mr. Murphy, I would not shed a single tear if our lads were to catch up with you, but you are a worthy adversary, I’ll say that. And a charming bastard.”
Ah, the English sense of fair play, Murphy reflected. That’s why we’ll win eventually, Mr. Ashley.
No, you won’t. Ashley had seen that look before.
“How can I make you believe me?” Murphy asked reasonably.
“Names and addresses,” Ashley answered quietly.
“No. We cannot do that and you know it.”
“If you wish to establish some sort of quid pro quo, that’s how you must go about it.”
Murphy sighed. “Surely you know how we are organized. Do you think we can punch up a bloody computer command and print out our roster? We’re not even sure ourselves who they are. Some men, they just drop out. Many come south and simply vanish, more afraid of us than of you, they are—and with reason,” Murphy added. “The one you have alive, Sean Miller—we’ve never even heard the name.”
“And Kevin O’Donnell?”
“Yes, he’s probably the leader. He dropped off the earth four years ago, as you well know, after—ah, you know the story as well as I.”
Kevin Joseph O‘Donnell, Ashley reminded himself. Thirty-four now. Six feet, one hundred sixty pounds, unmarried—this data was old and therefore suspect. The all-time Provo champion at “own-goals.” Kevin had been the most ruthless chief of security the Provos had ever had, thrown out after it had been proven that he’d used his power as counterintelligence boss to purge the Organization of political elements he disapproved of. What was the figure—ten, fifteen solid members that he’d had killed or maimed before the Brigade Commander’d found him out? The amazing thing, Ashley thought, was that he’d escaped alive at all. But Murphy was wrong on one thing, Ashley didn’t know what had finally tipped the Brigade that O’Donnell was outlaw.
“I fail to see why you feel the urge to protect him and his group.” He knew the reason, but why not prod the man when he had the chance?
“And if we turn ‘grass,’ what becomes of the Organization?” Murphy asked.
“Not my problem, Mr. Murphy, but I do see your point. Still and all, if you want us to believe you—”
“Mr. Ashley, you demonstrate the basis of the entire problem we have, don’t you? Had your country ever dealt with Ireland in mutual good faith, surely we would not be here now, would we?”
